Pages

17 February 2015

Within the past 6 months, Anjo and I have adopted two [fixed] house-bunnies through Bunny Buddies in Houston: Luna and Neville.

Luna was adopted on August 2, 2014, and at the time we had no plans to adopt a second housebunny. She is a Californian but was nearly all white with light grey points. Awww, isn't she a cutie? We named her Luna because of how beautifully light her fur is AND her light grey points reminded me of bassalt-rich outcroppings found on the moon. Moon = Luna.

What a gorgeous bunny! The previous picture shows her in the warm, Texas summer. Once the weather started cooling, she went through a molt, and her points came back much darker. It is hard to imagine, but this is the same bunny, just 6 months apart.

Californian rabbits get darker in winter and lighter in summer because the mutated gene that causes their albinism is temperature sensitive. The cooler it is, the darker the fur. To put it more scientifically, the mutated color blocking gene cannot function in lower temperatures, which frees the dark fur genes, that had been suppressed, to work their magic. The points are only visible because the ears, nose, feet, and tail are the coolest places on a bunny.

Oh, yeah! I started this post with the mention of TWO bunnies. Let's get back to that.

A few months into our life with Luna, we started to notice that she might be needing a companion. On January 25, 2015, we found ourselves, with Luna, at a Bunny Buddies adoption event looking for another bunny. She met four rabbits that day, and got along as well as could be expected with three of them. She even groomed two of them, which left the ultimate decision up to us. We decided on this little fella, and named him Neville, because he is sort of awkward. He is fully grown, but small (half Luna's size) and he has huge feet that he trips over.

He also has ambidextrous ears! Sometimes they are up, sometimes they are down. What a cutie patootie!

If you are a Harry Potter fan, you will understand the names. Even though JK Rowling did not decide to have Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom marry each other, we felt that they were meant to be together in SOME way. As to what extent that is, we have no idea yet. They are not exactly on friendly terms now that we are back at Luna's home. She is a territorial little bun! They have gotten in a few squabbles, so we are taking it easy and letting them live in separate houses. Fingers crossed for an eventual friendship between the two of them.